Turkey PM, Tayyip Erdogan, to Israeli Jews: Your Religion Tells You, "Thou Shalt Not Kill"

Turkey PM, Tayyip Erdogan, to Israeli Jews:

Your Religion Tells You, "Thou Shalt Not Kill"

Turkey PM to Israel: Thou shalt not kill

(updated) 04/06/2010 20:28 Bethlehem - Ma'an -

Appealing to Israel's Jewish majority, Turkey on Friday angrily reminded its ally that Judaism rejects murder.

"I'll say to you in your own language. I say in Hebrew 'Lo Tirtzakh'," or, "Thou shalt not kill," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said, in a televised speech to supporters of his AK Party.

"I am speaking to them in their own language. The sixth commandment says 'Thou shalt not kill.' Did you not understand?" he said, threatening to cut ties after Israel's deadly raid off Gaza's coast.

It was the harshest rebuke yet, Reuters reported, since Israeli commandos killed nine passengers aboard an international aid vessel carrying tons of humanitarian assistance bound for the besieged coastal enclave.

Erdogan's remarks echoed those by Hamas leaders in the aftermath of the attack.

"What Israel did is a revolt against the world, against international law and against the moral principles of all monotheistic religions – even Judaism," Hamas chief Khaled Mesha'al said Monday hours after the raid.

"It's strange that Israel says all the activists were Hamas supporters. One of them was a Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust, and I never heard her supporting us," Mesha'al said. "Today Israel is isolated as it has never been before because it is committing a holocaust, even against Holocaust survivors."

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